John Allen, editor of CRUX and long-time Vatican apologist, just published “Amid child porn scandal, Vatican backs push for child safety online.” The Vatican has protected a senior official from repeated criminal charges for child abuse, but Allen announces that it is holding a three-day conference with “leading experts on child protection, law enforcement officials, executives of Internet and social media companies, NGOs, and others, to discuss how to promote child welfare online.” Allen believes these officials will “hammer out a plan of action, which will be presented to Pope Francis on Friday when conference participants meet him in an audience.” What more can you ask for?

Somehow Allen seems to have forgotten the Church’s sex abuse crisis. This has been going on for decades, yet the Vatican has repeatedly refused to develop such a “plan of action” to prevent clerical child rape, a far worse crime than pornography. While popes and other Vatican officials constantly chant “Zero tolerance,” they have steadfastly refused to enact concrete policies to deter these crimes. Does Allen really believe that the Vatican will suddenly conduct a successful attack on child pornography when it has does virtually nothing but make empty promises about clerical abuse of children?